Syria calls on the UN to condemn shelling of Damascus by terrorists

The Foreign and Expatriates Ministry sent two identical letters on Friday to the head of the Security Council and the UN Secretary-General on the new terrorist rocket and mortar shell attack on Damascus.
In the letters, the Ministry said that Damascus witnessed since the early morning of Thursday February 5th, 2015, a barbaric barrage of rocket and mortar shells by terrorists at a time when students were going to school and when employees were going to work.

The Ministry said that terrorists fired more than 115 rocket shells of varying sizes on Damascus, in addition to 6 on Lattakia and 9 on Aleppo, with the shells hitting civilians’ homes, schools, and universities and landing near governmental, diplomatic, and international establishments, claiming the lives of 26 people and injuring 48 according to preliminary reports, including children, women, and elderly people, in addition to causing massive material damage that is currently being assessed.

The letters said that the Syrian government would like to point out that the terrorist Zahran Alloush, who heads the so-called Islam Army which is a terrorist organizations armed and funded by Saudi Arabia under support by Western countries, had announced on February 3rd via social network that “all of Damascus is a military zone and a theatre of operations” and calling on “civilians, members of diplomatic missions, and school and university students to not approach any of the regime’s establishments and barricades, walk by cars belonging to it, or move around during working hours of the Capital as of Wednesday morning until further notice.”

The Ministry said that the terrorist shelling of Damascus which began at 7:30 am shows the barbaric and criminal nature of these organizations that some regional and international forces still try to protect and shelter its sponsors from accountability and from being listed among terrorist organizations by the Security Council under the claim that they are “moderate opposition groups” despite all the crimes against humanity they committed and despite the fact that they targeted Damascus with arbitrary shelling that struck civilians in their homes, and even near the Indonesian Embassy, at the Education and Economy Faculties in Damascus University, and al-Andalus School.

The letters said that this attack continues the series of terrorist attacks and bombings that were committed in Aleppo and Lattakia by terrorist groups like ISIS, Jabhet al-Nusra, Islam Army, Hazm Movement, and al-Jabha al-Shamiya, among other terrorist organizations which are affiliated to Al Qaeda and subservient to regimes in the region and outside, particularly those of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel.

The Ministry said that these crimes are an extension of other recent barbaric crimes like the decapitation of the Japanese citizens Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa and the burning of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh alive.

The letters noted that Syria had repeatedly warned against the threat posed by these terrorist organizations to international and regional security and stability and the repercussions of the support provided to these organizations by some states, as these repercussions will not be limited to Syria but will extend to reach even those who support, fund, and train terrorists, citing the recent events in France and elsewhere as proof of the veracity of the Syrian government’s position and of the need for the world to cooperate and coordinate with Syria to combat terrorism.

The Ministry said that the aforementioned terrorist crimes require that the Security Council and the UN Secretary-General shoulder their responsibilities, condemn these terrorist actions, take the necessary steps to coordinate and cooperate with the Syrian government in its war on terror, take the necessary steps to pressure the states that support terrorism to cease their actions immediately and to shut down the camps where these terrorists are trained, in addition to taking steps to stop the flow of terrorists into Syria as per international legitimacy resolutions, and adding the Islam Army, the Islamic Front, and other such groups to the lists of terrorist entities.

The letters concluded by asserting that such terrorist actions will not succeed in dissuading the Syrian people, government, and army from combating terrorism, nor will they succeed in terrorizing them and paralyzing their lives after they withstood four years of terrorist war that targeted the values, principles, tolerance, and very existence of the Syrian people.